The Journey
by redex
Summary: nonDH.  Gen with mild SiriusRemus hints.  There are teachers, a journey, a river, and a forest. One of many roads to enlightenment.


There is a battered old copy of _Siddhartha _in your pocket. It used to be firm and flat, but it is so worn now that it moulds to the shape of your pocket. Your slide your fingers over the engraved words on the cover, a comforting motion that wore away the gold paint highlighting the latin characters years ago. You have been touching it more and more since you came here. It reminds you of years gone by, when you had the time and energy to learn a new language just because you wanted to. A book, neither fiction nor non-fiction, written in German about an Indian man and his rise to divinity unnumbered years ago. The story of a journey of a life. 

You wish someone would write down your life like this. As an instruction. A warning.

When you remove your clothes and place them in a hollow under a tree they are like a bundle surrounding a precious baby child. You leave everything - your vanities, your love, your magic, your sanity - and turn towards the dark woods before you.

You fear no longer, nor do you desire. You pass through the gate and into the forest of darkness.

---

Your father was a Healer, which made it worse. He understood with a scientific depth the horrors you were going to go through for the rest of your life. Your mother mistook his grave acceptance for lack of care, causing many whispered fights outside your bedroom, but you knew better. Children know love when they see it.

You quickly became good at forgiving people.

---

It is as though you have been waiting your entire life for someone to ask you the right question. You don't care what happens next, now that they know. You feel like dancing and you're aware of the broad, stupidly-happy grin pushing it's way onto your twitching lips. Dancing. Siddhartha rests against your breast and you wish there was a river in front of you just so that you could cross it.

The fear is gone.

---

A new fear comes to replace it, of course. Fear of the loss of what you have gained. It clutches at you every day as you run around, trying to save the world. There is no time for dancing, now.

You think of the lump of Lily's belly and the increasingly savage look in Sirius' eyes.

On moons you scream your lungs raw and on other nights you fuck like a demon. You torture people, you watch people being tortured, you save people from torture. What does it matter any more?

The fear is all the same.

---

You have spent your entire life denying yourself pity. You wear your old second-hand robes with pride, you take obsessive care of your books (and one in particular), you smile and shake your head at anyone who tries to tell you you could do better.

You're not quite sure why you do it, but you aren't aware that your pride exceeds that of a certain noble house until no one has the patience to offer you things for you to refuse any more. Why have you been doing this to yourself all these years? Pride falls away, falls into the dark pool of your loss.

That is when you remember that Siddhartha did not stay a Samana forever.

---

You look at Dumbledore and see in his eyes that it is possible. You see the reassurance that he holds around him like a cloak of many colours, like a cloud of peace. He drives you to try harder, to do more, to find the path that leads over the river.

And then he's dead.

And you have no doubt that he's happy with that conclusion of his life, satisfied with what he has wrought, and you... You are not there yet. He could never have taken you there, but now he is gone and you are left to your journey alone.

There are no teachers left.

---

You throw yourself into him and his love. You eat when you want to, what you want to. You buy things on a whim (usually books) and accept every offer of help given to you. Your friends think the war has driven you mad, but don't have the time nor the energy to worry about you.

It takes you a month, from start to finish. You lay in on the street, blood gushing from your side (no doubt half alcohol by now) and laugh until you choke at the sky.

You're lost.

---

You find your river in this boy. He fights and fights and fights without even asking why. You wish you had his conviction. You wish you could do more for him. Without noticing it, you had become a real teacher, like the ones you had worshiped all along. You close your eyes and tell him that you cannot teach him anything he will not find out on his own. You give him up. You have taught him all you can.

There is no way to teach life.

---

There was nothing in the forest to find. Death looked you in the eye and passed you by as you cursed at his retreating form.

You pull on your robes, foreign to the touch with long disuse, and touch the ink with your dirty fingers. The words do not change.

And, finally, the last and greatest fear and desire of your life has fallen away.


End file.
